


Just One Good Look

by Jaydeun



Category: Good Omens - Neil Gaiman & Terry Pratchett
Genre: Drunk Aziraphale (Good Omens), Drunk Crowley (Good Omens), Drunken Shenanigans, Fluff, M/M, Scary Angel, True Forms
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-08-14
Updated: 2019-08-14
Packaged: 2020-08-31 23:33:03
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,579
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20248468
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Jaydeun/pseuds/Jaydeun
Summary: “Of course I know what you look like,” Crowley insisted at the ceiling. He’d made it through a bottle and a half of very fine Burgundy and had slithered from a sofa arm perch to a sofa sprawl.“I really don’t think you do,” Aziraphale bubbled into his own glass.“Look, right?” Crowley dangled one arm over the other in a boneless attempt at swiveling upright. “I know what I look like—”“A snek. Snake. I mean,” Aziraphale giggled.“No, before that!”“Big black one. Red belly,” Aziraphale tickled his own middle and giggled again. Crowley rolled to sitting.“Listen you—sober a little, you’re a mess, yeh?” He shook his hair back from where it kept creeping into his line of sight. “Before snake. I had a before-snake moment. And anyway, I remember all the angel stuff well enough.”Or: Drunk decisions get drunk results.





	Just One Good Look

**Author's Note:**

> This work was created for the 2019 Good Omens Fan Exchange, #GOFanExchange on twitter. The prompt: angels true forms are really, really weird. Aziraphale isn't sure Crowley's ever seen the whole thing or reaction to it.
> 
> Also: Drunk Bois  
ALSO: Look, a reader did art for it! hurray! https://arkodian.tumblr.com/post/187334854579/based-on-the-fanfic-just-one-good-look-by

Just One Good Look

“Of _course_ I know what you look like,” Crowley insisted at the ceiling. He’d made it through a bottle and a half of very fine Burgundy and had slithered from a sofa arm perch to a sofa sprawl.

“I really don’t think you do,” Aziraphale bubbled into his own glass.

“Look, right?” Crowley dangled one arm over the other in a boneless attempt at swiveling upright. “I know what _I _look like—”

“A snek. Snake. I mean,” Aziraphale giggled.

“No, before that!”

“Big black one. Red belly,” Aziraphale tickled his own middle and giggled again. Crowley rolled to sitting.

“Listen you—sober a little, you’re a mess, yeh?” He shook his hair back from where it kept creeping into his line of sight. “Before snake. I had a before-snake moment. And anyway, I remember all the angel stuff well enough.”

Aziraphale had tried to take offense at being told he was too drunk. But he kept forgetting what offended felt like. He settled for making his original point.

“That’s just usual angels,” he sniffed. “I’m not one of those.”

“Oh _well done you_,” Crowley mocked. “You like the archi—achan—Gabriel types? Got four wings instead of two like a feathered dragonfly?”

“_No_ not like _Gabriel_,” Aziraphale said, sticking his tongue out. It was decidedly purple; he’d been through three bottles already, having had a slight head start. “I’m a Principle.”

“Principality,” Crowley corrected, raising his glass from where he’d sunk into the cushions.

“Exactly,” Aziraphale agreed. “I’m special.”

“Yes, fine, fine,” Crowley drained his glass. “You have more of this someplace?” He struggled to his feet. Given the way his hips worked, walking while drunk was a specialty. Aziraphale waved his hand behind him.

“Shelf. So I was saying, I’m special. And _terribly_ frightening.”

Crowley filled his glass without spilling too much. Aziraphale held out his own for the same treatment.

“_Very_ scary,” he continued. “Much too much for _you_, my dear boy.”

“’Ziraphale, angel, Principle dragonfly, you forget: I saw you in the Eden.”

“THE Eden?”

“Garden of. You know what I mean,” Crowley crashed back to the sofa. Wine sloshed out of the glass and he flicked his tongue out to catch it. Aziraphale pointed.

“That’s Cheating.”

“Is not. You were the one talking about true forms and all that. Bleh, means nothing.” He sipped. Then gulped. “But I DID see you. ‘Member? White wings. Halo. Sword thing. Whole deal.”

“That wasn’t my Principality form, though! That was my angelic form.”

“And this is your drunk form,” Crowley spied at him through the wine glass. “I’ve seen Hastur in a bathing costume; you can’t scare me.* Do your worst.”

“No, no. Not a good idea at all,” Aziraphale said, shaking his head dizzily.

“Why’d you bring it up for, then?” Crowley grumbled. He raised one long arm over his head and flailed it about. “Look! An apple tree! Don’t eat from it!”

“That’s not fair.”

“Neither are you.”

“I am _too_—I’m the nice one. And I’m sparring you, anyhow. I mean spearing? No that’s not it. _Saving_. I’m saving you from it.”

“’Ziraphale,” Crowley said, planting both feet on the floor and leaning on his knees. “You’ve never turned into anything more frightening than a fat little gardener with buck teeth and gin blossom.”

Azirphale stuck out a pouting lip.

“You said you liked my gardener!”

“Didn’t say I didn’t! But srsssly, you won’t ssscare me. You been dying to do it all night—just out with it!”

Aziraphale attempted a look of pique that mostly looked very very drunk.

“You won’t like it.”

“Try me.”

“I warned you.”

“You did.”

Aziraphale puckered his lips slightly, then got to very wobbly feet.** After ensuring nothing would be directly in his path, he shuffled into the slightly more open space in front of the dusty sofa. Then he set about divesting himself of his coat, sliding out of one sleeve at a time until the coat fell to the floor behind him. Then he set to work on the buttons of his waistcoat, fingers moving slow as he worked at the buttons.

In front of him, Crowley had stopped drinking and started staring.

“Em, you practicing for _owl stretching time_?” He asked, voice just slightly higher than usual. Aziraphale had never seen Monty Python, however, and so wouldn’t catch the reference to strip-tease.

“Shush or I won’t do it,” Aziraphale said petulantly. He then worked off the bow tie and the collar buttons. Crowley dropped the wine glass.

“Are you going to be nude for this?” He asked, both eyes now trained on the peek of pale flesh appearing under the last of Aziraphale’s considerable layers. “I mean s’fine. SSss’fine and I just, ah. Oh.”

Aziraphale swayed slightly as the shirt hit the growing pile of clothing at his feet.

“That’s a lot,” he mumbled, eyes roving about the untidy geography of linen and wool. Crowley didn’t answer, unless you count the slight chir-ruping squeak at the back of his throat. Aziraphale attempted to kick the stuff away form him, and nearly tumbled over. He only kept his balance by wheeling his arms like a windmill at either side, causing his rather soft middle to jiggle just slightly.

“Ngk,” Crowley said. He’d gone rather rigid against the back of the sofa.

“Ready?” Aziraphale asked when he’d managed to correct for the room’s constant spinning.

“Ssure.”

Crowley was not ready. He had not been ready for Aziraphale to start undressing himself, to be fair. But to level the field, Aziraphale was far from being quite ready, either. It had been a very long time since his stint before the throne.

“Wings! Wings, that’s it—need the wings to begin with,” he said. And with a shuddering gasp of atoms and sluicing electrons, pinions sprouted suddenly from the spare between his shoulder blades. They shot forward and aft, and sent Crowley ducking. The expanded primaries brushed the sides of walls, sent books askew and knocked the still full wine bottle to the floor. An angel can forget the size and shape of his wings, and a drunk angel forgets quite how to stand under their weight. Aziraphale toppled backward, tripped on his coat, and landed plumb on his backside in a heap of dust and feathers.

“Alright, angel?” Crowley asked, endeavoring to climb out of the cushions and offer a hand. Aziraphale giggled, and then looked cross.

“Yes, yes—oh do _sit_, I don’t need you _and _the room to be spinning.” He pushed himself to his feet, using the patagium of his wings as extra support struts.

“I’m sitting, I’m sssitting.” Crowley’s face quirked into a grin. “You still ain’t sscary.”

“I’m not done! True forms are complicated!”

“S’not. I can turn snake when I want,” Crowley said. Aziraphale gave him another pout, and he put his hands up in apology. “Right, right. Yer special. Let’s see it.”

It should probably be said that humans had described the Principality form in the book of Revelations: covered with eyes, front and back, like a lion and an ox, an eagle and a man, six wings also covered in eyes and something like golden wheels for feet. It should also be said that they got it mostly wrong. Except for the eyes.

“HOLY FUCK,” is what Crowley _would _have said, had he been able to say anything. But the appearance of an enormous and undulating being, whirling like a Mandelbrot set and shining in colors that didn’t even exist in the plane of earth—and the equally unnerving appearance of glistening eyes (and eyes and eyes and eyes)—had caused Crowley to spontaneously convert himself into coils and scales and to hide beneath the sofa. It was a bit like having the Horsehead Nebula manifest in your living room.

The PRINCIPALITY that was Aziraphale shook the room for a full twelve seconds before the concentration it required being too much for his still wine-addled and corporeal brain. A flash and a bang announced the reversal, and he folded in on himself. The room was a dimly lit mess of broken glass and spilled alcohol.

“Ooopsies,” Aziraphale flapped one wing against the floor, then remembered to put them back again where they belonged. “Crowley?”

There was no Crowley. There was _crawly_, and he stuck his shy head out from beneath the cushions where they had tumbled to the floor.

“Oh. Dear. I’m sorry!” Aziraphale said, kneeling on his shirt and vest and looking the massive adder in the eyes. A tongue flicked out, grazing Aziraphale’s cheek. Then he slithered his way back into the open, and went to work on the business of turned back into Crowley.

“Angel?” He asked, when he’d flopped back onto the sofa. Aziraphale was busy re-vesting himself. A bit clumsily.

“Yes, dear?”

“Never, ever do that again.”

“Yes. Quite right.”

“Like, not ever.”

“Agreed.”

“Ever, ever.”

“Crowley!” Aziraphale snipped. He’d shuffled the coat on again and set about miracling wine out of his rug. “I _promise_.”

“Good.” He stretched himself, spine crick-cracking. “And write this down somewhere would you?”

“Write what, my dear?”

Crowley leaned his chin on one hand and blinked slowly at his best friend.

“You were right. You are fucking terrifying.”

Note* Crowley saw Hastur in a bathing costume because he convinced Hastur that it was proper Human attire for the 1920s. As usual, his pranks backfired when he actually had to SEE Hastur in a bathing costume...


End file.
